SC Italia, the same men’s soccer team that has won the Sudbury Star Cup two years in a row, continued its winning ways in the over-35 Joe De Fabrizio Soccer Tournament in Bracebridge on Labour Day weekend.

Its players got a little revenge, too.

There were five teams participating in the tournament, with the squad with the best overall record after the round robin claiming the tournament championship.

In Day 1, and Game 1, SC Italia tied 1-1 against Muskoka.

“Which was a little bit odd for us, because we’ve beat them every year,” said Chris Anselmo, a player and coach for SC Italia. “It set us back.”

Game 2 pitted SC Italia against Dashmesh FC — a team based out of the Greater Toronto Area — in a rematch of last year’s tournament final, which SC Italia lost, missing two penalty shots in the process.

This year, however, SC Italia scored a 1-0 win, giving them four points. That game and its result later proved to be the difference-maker in deciding the tournament winner.

“But we had to win both our games the next day,” Anselmo said.

By the end of Day 2, with Dashmesh FC sitting at nine points and SC Italia at seven, thanks to a win earlier in the day, the Sudbury footballers had an opportunity to clinch the championship in their final game — which also, fittingly, served as the final game of the tournament as a whole — versus Huntsville.

SC Italia won that game 5-1, giving them 10 points and first overall.

SC Italia’s Francois Nzo scored the goal of the tournament, as Anselmo described it, with a screamer off his left foot from 30 yards out that sailed into the top right corner of the net.

The goal was scored on Sept. 1 – Nzo’s birthday.

“We squeaked it out,” Anselmo said. “It was nice to get it back this year. They (Dashmesh) were sitting behind the other team’s goalie because they were watching, hoping that we’d lose, so they could walk away with it again this year, but we didn’t leave them too happy.”

Overall, SC Italia went undefeated, with a 3-0-1 record, scoring 10 goals and with only two against.

“We sat back and said, ‘OK, we’ve left it to ourselves now. We either win or we beat ourselves’, because we were confident enough to know that we had a deep enough team to go deep, but we had no choice (after a Game 1 tie) to win out, because we knew Dashmesh had been walking all over every team for the past three, four years, so we knew we couldn’t let any more points slip away.

“After that first game we knew anything could happen, so we put guys in certain positions and said, ‘We know this isn’t where you normally play, but we need you here.’”

SC Italia only had 14 players, due to several injuries, leaving them with three substitutions for the entire tournament.

“Which can catch up to you,” Anselmo said.

But with the help of a full-team effort, including standouts like Bobby McKinty, Matt Carbone, tournament MVP Mike Asunmaa and keeper John Radu, SC Italia pulled off the task.

SC Italia currently leads its over-40 regular season, as well, with four games remaining. Playoffs will begin soon afterwards.

“Potentially, we’re set up to win four out of the five competitions we’ve played in this summer,” Anselmo said.